


Free Student To Good Home (Not House Trained)

by raendown



Series: The University Chronicles [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-03 06:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17278655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Now attending the university here in their hometown as he begins his Master's, Tobirama develops a problem with falling asleep in the strangest of places. Madara, poor innocent never-deserved-any-of-this Madara, gets mistaken for a mattress one too many times. All he wanted to do was focus on his career but instead he finds himself forcibly tasked with herding his secret crush towards better sleep habits. It's driving himup the wall.





	1. A Lap To Call Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [copyninken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/copyninken/gifts).



> A gift for a good Bean, one who deserves to have her mad ideas enshrined in all their utterly terrible glory. 
> 
> Story takes place two years after [What I'm Selling Ain't Cheap (Context Is Everything)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17058131). Will probably make sense on its own but I do recommend reading that one first.

Madara didn’t so much as flinch when the front door slammed shut behind him with an echoing bang but he did pause to wince at the sound of wooden picture frames rattling against the wall. If any of those dropped he would never hear the end of it from Mito. He would prefer not to get banned from his best friend’s house, especially considering how many nights he showed up with his head too full of the world’s darkest realities, nights when he needed Hashirama’s stupid smile to remind him that everything was okay.

Voices drifted out from the other room but Madara ignored them, making his way to the den instead and throwing himself moodily down on the couch. It was a good soft couch with wide cushions and no judgements about the three extra pounds he was pretty sure he’d gained this month. Today’s shift hadn’t quite been filled with as many horrible gruesome things as he had seen in the past few years but it had been stressful just the same and all he wanted to do was relax in a place where he knew he would be safe yet not alone. Maybe later he would work up the energy to call Izuna and berate his brother for moving halfway across the country. Honestly. Who did that?

All of his brothers had done that. Madara himself was the last of the Uchiha siblings left in their hometown. If it wasn’t for Hashirama taking him in during college he probably would have followed them out of sheer loneliness no matter how much he loved this city.

The wave of fondness that was about to roll over him crested and washed back in the opposite direction when he heard his best friend’s voice stage whispering much too loudly from the other room.

“Shhh we should be quiet. He’s had no sleep and you _know_ he has a gun.”

“The safety is on, you moron,” he called out, voice muffled by couch fibers. “But I’ll take it off for you!”

He didn’t realize his own innuendo until he heard Mito snickering away in the kitchen. Then he was thanking his lucky stars that no one was here to watch his attempt to suffocate himself with tacky upholstery. Disgusting. As if he would ever touch that big moose, not with a ten foot pole and three pairs of rubber gloves! Madara liked to think he had more refined taste than that.

Of course, his tastes included an oblivious albino who frequently tortured him with too-familiar contact and yet never seemed to understand what kind of havoc he was wreaking on poor Madara’s heart. So there was that. The memory of the first time he’d visited Tobirama at university two years ago was still vivid in his mind, how he had been used as a glorified electric blanket and then discarded immediately after he was no longer needed. It had never seemed to occur to Tobirama that what they were doing was basically cuddling and could be interpreted as romantic. All he’d cared about was staying warm while the heater wasn’t working.

“Don’t be silly, sweetheart, Madara would never really shoot me!” Hashirama sounded much too confident for a man who had only just been worrying about the presence of a gun. Madara grumbled to himself as he reached down and fumbled at his hip, unclipping the holster and pulling out his standard issue pistol.

He reveled in the terrified squeak that drifted out of the kitchen when he pulled back the slide to cock his weapon. There wasn’t even anything in the clip but Hashirama didn’t need to know that.

The sound of the front door opening and closing again had him dropping the gun to gently slide it underneath the couch so curious fingers wouldn’t find it. Having finished his bachelor’s degree last year, Tobirama was home now where the local university had a program he approved of to begin his master’s. Supposedly he had his own apartment but Madara wasn’t truly sure he lived in it. Actually, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain where the man lived at all. The deeper he got in to studies the worse his sleeping habits had become and ever since Tobirama came home Madara had been finding him sleeping in the strangest places around town on a worryingly frequent basis.

Like now as the zombified form of a pale Senju shuffled in to the room with his eyes barely open, his feet leading him unerringly towards the couch that already had someone sprawled out across it. Tobirama had enough awareness left to turn and sit down properly like a real human being. He did not, apparently, have enough to notice that he was sitting on top of Madara.

“Get. Off. Of. Me.”

In his peripheral vision Madara could see Tobirama lift his head and blink around himself foggily. When he didn’t see anyone his eyes slid shut and his body toppled over sideways, almost seeming to melt on to the body underneath him.

“Warm,” he mumbled absently.

“Tobirama, what the fuck?”

“Shhh, couch. Shhhh. Sleep now.”

And then he was gone, passed out between one breath and the next. Madara wondered if the screaming he could hear was coming from himself or it if was just inside his own head.

No matter how he squirmed or wriggled it did nothing to dislodge Tobirama’s tired form. He wondered how long the idiot had been awake for this time. Twenty hours? Thirty? How many projects could he really have to work on? At least now he was doing only his own homework and not completing other people’s assignments for petty cash like he had when he was off doing his bachelor’s.

Finally Madara gave up and let one of his arms drape down to the floor, his eyebrows bunched together in confused desperation. He hadn’t really planned to stay all that long. Mostly he’d just wanted to come sulk around the place until Hashirama offered to feed him so he wouldn’t have to eat dinner alone in his own too-big apartment. He hated the way the whole place seemed to echo every time he so much as breathed. Izuna used to live there with him and he’d liked things just fine until the traitor moved out west.

Hashirama found him a couple of minutes later, cooing softly when he spotted his sleeping baby brother and then gurgling in shock when he spotted Madara underneath.

“What…are you doing?” he asked slowly, drawing the words out until they could be considered vaguely threatening.

“Don’t stand there like an idiot,” Madara growled. “Help me! I don’t even know what’s happening right now, he just sat down on top of me like I was part of the couch!”

“Hold on, you want _me_ to move him?”

“Yes!”

Hashirama backed away with both hands held in front of himself protectively. “Oh no. No way. The last time I tried to move him while he was sleeping I lost a chunk of my hair. It’s still growing back! My braid looks all lopsided when I go to bed!” He pouted while Madara stared at him incredulously. Partly because he was being dumb and partly because he’d been wondering why that one chunk of hair was shorter than the rest; he had not suspected Tobirama as the culprit – although he really should have.

“Well what am I supposed to do?” he demanded incredulously. “Just lie here until he wakes up?”

“I think that’s the safest option. Should I bring you both a blanket?”

“No! No wait! Hashirama, get back here! I don’t want a blanket, I want to go to sleep in my own bed without one hundred eighty pound of albino on top of me! Hashirama!” Yelling, he discovered just then, was not half as fun when he had to whisper at the same time.

Unfortunately Hashirama had no sympathy for his plight and Madara was smart enough to be afraid of how Tobirama would react if his precious rest was disturbed. A blanket was fetched, a pillow was maneuvered under his head, and Madara resigned himself to lounging in his best friend’s house for much longer than he originally intended to. His head was at least facing the right way at just the perfect angle so he was able to entertain himself with whatever happened to be playing on the television at the moment.

Hashirama even set the remote on the floor where his arm could reach it.

It took an hour or so of rotting his brain but eventually Madara nodded off himself, more comfortable than he thought anyone had a right to be while they were squashed under the weight of another person. When he woke he was alone on the couch, blanket crumpled by his feet and no trace of Tobirama but for the lingering scent of ink and paper. A quick look at his watch told him he’d slept through the night and was due back at work in two hours, just enough time to rush home, shower, grab a bite to eat, and change.

He spent the entire two hours wondering if he’d dreamed the whole thing up.


	2. Vagrancy With Style

Right up until ten minutes after his lunch break ended, Madara’s day was going fairly well. He’d made two arrests and one of those was a man whom he had stopped from becoming a murderer, talking him down from stabbing someone who had offered him insults after too many beers. On top of that he’d been able to take his lunch break on time and managed to finish his entire sandwich before a fight erupted in the cells that he had to split up.

He and his partner were milling around the station doing some routine paperwork when one of his fellow officers called him over and waved the desk phone at him.

“Call for you, Uchiha.”

“From who?”

“Dunno. Asked for ‘that idiot Uchiha’ and no one calls your cousin that. Shisui’s too nice to people.” The man grinned until Madara sneered and grabbed the phone away from him.

Then he stopped laughing when Madara’s foot connected with his chair and rolled him halfway across the bullpen.

“Officer Uchiha speaking.”

“Where are you?” A familiar voice demanded. Madara took the phone away from his ear to give it a funny look, wondering if he was hearing things.

“I’m…at work?”

“Ugh.” Even through the phone no one was quite able to express disgust the way Tobirama did. “Useless. I need to sleep.”

With that he hung up and Madara was left staring the receiver again as though it might provide some answers as to what the hell that was all about. He hadn’t seen the other man for a week, not since that very weird incident at Hashirama’s place that he was still half certain had all been a dream. Nothing in that phone call had made sense but he didn’t have Tobirama’s number to call back and demand clarification.

Shisui gave him a questioning look but Madara waved him off. He didn’t know what the hell was going on either and he didn’t feel like fielding questions he had no answers for.

He gave some thought to sending Hashirama a quick text over the next couple of hours but he wasn’t even sure what to ask or how to put in to words the strange phone call he had received. It had undoubtedly been Tobirama on the other end of the line, there was no mistaking that delicious growl of a voice, but beyond identification he was stumped. If Madara could think of a single reason the man might need to call him then perhaps he might have a frame of reference for guessing what the hell he wanted.

Ultimately he ended up forcing the issue out of his mind because it was much too distracting and he wasn’t getting any of his paperwork done. There were arrest reports to be filled out, case files to be updated, endless paper to waste, and he only had so many hours in each day to do it all. Shisui was drooped over the desk facing his and watching his partner undergo the same punishment was just enough motivation to keep himself going whenever his fingers began to cramp from all the writing.

With only twenty minutes left to go before sweet, sweet freedom the doors to the bullpen opened and Madara was forced to rub his eyes just to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. A questioning look at the rookie heading towards him leading another man in cuffs earned him a shrug.

“Picked him up for vagrancy,” Asuma explained. “Told him a week ago that was the last time I’d look the other way if I found him sleeping on a park bench.”

Madara gurgled, prompted Tobirama to raise his head at the familiar sound.

“Oh. There you are.”

“Tobirama,” he growled. “You were sleeping on a park bench!?”

“You know the guy?” Asuma asked. Madara pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Unfortunately. Can you just let me handle this one, Sarutobi?”

The rookie gave him a disapproving look but released custody all the same. Madara sneered at him thankfully – an expression only he seemed to be able to master – then took Tobirama by the arm and dragged him over to the desk where they had at least a modicum of privacy.

“What the _fuck_?”

“It isn’t my fault you weren’t available,” Tobirama insisted. “I need to sleep, Uchiha. Now take me home.”

“You are hardly in a position to be making demands here.”

“We both know you’re not going to actually charge me with anything so let’s just go and not bore ourselves with any unnecessary theatrics.” He looked perfectly calm and unaware of how utterly frustrating he was being as he lifted one eyebrow and swanned off back towards where he was led in. Madara could feel his face twitching, confirmed by the way his partner was laughing at him without bothering to hide it.

Stomping his feet on the way passed, he snapped out, “I’m leaving early.”

Then he rushed to follow after the escaping Senju, rightfully wary of what might happen should he let the man out of his sight for more than half a minute.

He had assumed by ‘home’ Tobirama was demanding to be given a ride back to his apartment but they were halfway there when he was casually informed that Hashirama’s house was in the opposite direction and asked – in a very insulting manner – if he still needed directions after all these years. Sometimes he questioned his own taste in men. Why did he have to develop a lingering crush on the one person who pressed all of his buttons so frequently?

Probably because he actually sort of liked the rhythm of their bickering relationship. Not that he would ever admit to that.

No one was home when they trooped inside Hashirama’s house but they’d both been given keys to the place years ago so neither of them wasted time wondering if they were unwelcome or not. Madara had every intention of heading in to the kitchen to make himself a pot of coffee but instead he found two hands planted behind his shoulder blades to steer him towards the living room.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he asked. Just to be contrary he dug his heels in and leaned back against the one pushing him. Tobirama blew on his ear in retaliation, trilling in satisfaction when he jumped and accidentally made it easier to push him around again.

“I have told you more than once: _I need sleep_. Your brainless officer interrupted me while I was trying to do so.”

“Asuma isn’t ‘my officer’,” he protested. “And I still have no idea what any of this has to do with me.”

“Take responsibility for the beast you created!”

One final shove toppled him over and Madara landed face down on the couch. He had enough time to wriggle over on to his back before Tobirama was crawling over top of him and flopping down, face buried in his rapidly heating neck and arms dangling loosely around his chest.

“Senju, WHAT THE HELL!?”

“Do be quiet, mattress.”

“I am not a mattress! What is the meaning of this?”

Tobirama patted him softly. “Hush. It is sleep time now.” It was just startling enough that Madara spent a good three minutes simply lying still and wondering what he had done in a previous life to deserve such torture. Surely he couldn’t have done something terrible enough for this. Or if he had then he really thought serving the public as a police officer in this life should have made up for it.

“You have three seconds to explain what is going on or I am throwing you on the floor and telling Hashirama to have you checked in for a psych eval.”

“Rude,” Tobirama mumbled against his neck. “I haven’t slept so well in months as I did when I mistook you for a part of the couch.” He ruthlessly ignored Madara’s offended squeaking. “Now you’re just going to have to take responsibility. I need more sleep. You’re going to lie still and let me do so.” The ‘or else’ was not spoken but it was heavily implied in his tone.

Madara chewed on that for a few moments. Then he finally allowed the muscles in his body to relax, signaling defeat, and his unwanted blush kicked it up a few notches when Tobirama snuggled in that little bit closer, making himself as comfortable as possible.

“Such a warm mattress.”

“Oh shut up.”

It felt like only an instant later that Tobirama was asleep and breathing softly against the nape of his neck where he was embarrassingly sensitive. No matter how he tried to shift or twist it didn’t move the lump on top of him, only earned him a handful of fingers clawing at his chest to keep him still. Since he didn’t want to have all his precious hair shaved off the next time he fell asleep without locking his doors, Madara did eventually give in to his fate and lie still, hoping he would at least doze off again himself to pass the time.

He contemplated spontaneous combustion when Hashirama came home from work.

The sheer amount of heat gathered in his own face could probably be labeled a fire hazard but Hashirama wasn’t looking at his face. No, the man was looking at where his little brother’s face was mashed against his best friend’s neck, mouth buried in a spot that usually only lovers paid attention to and one hand fisted in the front of his shirt to prevent him from escaping. Madara counted his own breaths just in case these were his last.

“Accidentally fall over on top of you again, did he?” Hashirama asked, tone perfectly innocent but for the edge of threatening steel hiding underneath.

“No. He pushed me.”

“Hmm. Is that so?”

“It’s true!” Madara did his best to convey the urgency he felt while constrained to whisper yelling yet again. “One of the rookies picked him up for _vagrancy_. He was sleeping on park benches again. So I was going to take him home but he made me take him here instead and then he pushed me down and I swear I had no part it this, alright!?”

Hashirama twisted his mouth to one side. “Are we sure he even still has his apartment? It’s like he never goes home.”

“Well where the hell would all his clothes and shit be if he didn’t?”

“Oh…right.”

“Can you just help me please? I didn’t really plan on spending my off hours stuck on this stupid couch again!” Madara tried to imitate the other man’s signature pleading puppy look but he was frustrated to be denied with no hesitation.

“Nope, sorry. It still isn’t worth risking my good looks. You could probably use more sleep yourself anyway so just enjoy it, right? I’ll bring you some dinner if he still hasn’t woken up when it’s done!”

“Wait! No – get back here!”

Hashirama waved without sympathy and trailed off in to the kitchen, presumably to make sure he had dinner ready by the time his wife got home. As much as Madara wanted to be angry at him for being a big fat abandoner he had to admit that he probably would have done the exact same thing in this situation. All he could do now was lie still and hope Tobirama didn’t sleep for too long because if he took a long nap now then it would throw his entire body clock out of order and he’d be yawning all through tomorrow’s shift.

Five minutes later he realized that Hashirama hadn’t turned the television on for him and he couldn’t yell out to get the man’s attention. He managed to remain still for the hour it took until someone brought him dinner but he spent the entirety of it planning revenge against all of them, one way or another.


	3. Acceptance and Denial - A Madara Special

“Again?” Madara very much hoped everyone present could hear just how much exhaustion he was projecting in that one single word. Because he was. He was exhausted of this entire stupid game.

Tobirama shrugged, looking entirely too comfortable on his bench inside the holding cell. Asuma was holding in a fit of giggles as he unlocked the cage door and swung it open with a flourish that Madara felt was just uncalled for. He made sure to send his coworker a venomous glare before he stormed inside and took hold of Tobirama’s arm, dragging him away from the actual criminals milling around inside.

“What was it this time?” he demanded. “Another bench? Some poor old lady’s front stoop?”

“Neither. I was sleeping on the front steps of the library – quite uncomfortably, I might add.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Without looking Madara paused to shove his fist in the gut of another officer passing by when they laughed openly at the sight of Tobirama. The man was infamous around the station now. No one really bothered to try and charge him with anything but his fellow officers found a great deal of amusement in picking Tobirama up off the street wherever they happened to find him sleeping and then calling Madara in to come get him.

It was nice getting off work early so often but it was galling to know they were all laughing at him behind his back. Tobirama didn’t seem to care one way or another. All he cared about was whether or not his schoolwork came with him when he got taken in. Apparently the research he was doing for his thesis paper was more important than his reputation or the fact that Hashirama was clearly beginning to worry for him.

“Here’s the plan. I am going to take you back to your own apartment. Then you are going to lie down in your own fucking bed and sleep on an actual mattress like a regular human being. Did you get all that or do I need to break it down in to simpler sentences?”

“They shut off the heating in my apartment,” Tobirama mentioned casually. Madara paused in his steps to look at him in horror, to which he only shrugged. “My building manager says if I am never home then he might as well not waste the money since my rent is all inclusive. Apparently he doesn’t like heating empty homes.”

“He can’t _do_ that!” Madara screeched.

“Well he did.”

“But it’s so illegal! I should – UGH! Come on.” Resuming his steps, Madara pulled Tobirama along behind him like a dog on a leash. “I’ll buy you a space heater if I have to. I’ll _arrest that asshole_ if I have to. But you are going home to get a god damn good night’s rest!”

His own stomping footsteps seemed to echo all the more loudly in comparison to the serene way Tobirama floated along behind him but Madara was shamefully used to it so it didn’t bother him too much. Since it was clear he wouldn’t have much luck shaming Tobirama in to feeling guilty for his part in all this stupidity he kept himself reined in to just muttering darkly under his breath as he packed the younger man in to his personal car and wished he hadn’t promised Shisui that he wouldn’t take the squad car home again. The seats in his shitty sedan were much less comfortable.

The ride over to Hashirama’s was filled with bickering. Tobirama sort of wanted to go back to the library but Madara would hear nothing about it, not when the idiot clearly needed some more rest. Neither of them even bothered to suggest the apartment without heat again. Hashirama still had a bedroom set up for Tobirama to stay in when he could make it all the way passed the couch and Madara very much intended to see him tucked in to it before he left.

No one was home when they walked in – not surprising since it was the middle of the day, both occupants were still at work. Madara ignored his companion’s grumbling as they marched upstairs together and engaged in a quick staring contest at the bedroom door.

“What are you gonna do, throw me under the sheets?” Tobirama asked sarcastically.

“If I have to,” Madara snapped back. The other man paused to think of something to say to that. Evidently he couldn’t come up with anything because he ended the pause with a huff and stormed in to the room, dropping down on the mattress and pulling the blankets over himself with an irritable flourish.

“There. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Madara drawled. “Now _fucking sleep_. Who knows how long it will be until my fellow officers stop finding this funny and actually hit you with a charge for vagrancy? Get some rest before I pop a vein over you!”

He had to close the door quickly to avoid Tobirama’s eyebrow of judgement, pausing in the hallway to roll his eyes and then hurrying downstairs to his car so he could get back to work. His shift wasn’t over yet. If his Captain found out how much time he was spending away from work lately just to deal with this recurring problem he could get suspended or reassigned. After finally working his way off the nightshift he really didn’t want to go back to it.

Driving back to the office was too quiet now that he had no one to argue with and took too long without the squad car and the lights that got him a free pass through every stoplight. He did manage to slip back in to his desk chair just before the Captain stepped out of his office to hand out a couple new assignments. Madara let Shisui grab theirs and quietly followed along, trying not to look like he’d only just got back from an unauthorized personal errand. It earned him a funny look because he’d never been all that great of a deceiver, too emotional is his own stunted way to put much effort in to lying, but the Captain didn’t ask him any questions so he counted that one as a win.

The assignment given to them turned out to be a false alarm so Madara and his cousin spent the last half of their shift out on the streets for foot patrol. After the seventh little old lady who told him he was a sweet boy for serving his city he started to feel a little bit better, like his mood was finally turning around.

“So, tell me something,” Shisui said while they were paused on a street corner to keep an eye on some suspicious characters across the way. “Are you ever going to do something about him?”

“About who?”

“Oh, you know, that guy you have a massive crush on that keep showing up at the station.” Shisui stuck his tongue out between his teeth and grinned. Madara made sure no one was watching before he reached up and flicked that exposed tongue.

“Mind your own business,” he growled.

Shisui had to pause and flap his hands in pain, unable to soothe his tongue in any way, but when he was finally calm again he went right back to sniggering. “No way! Don’t you love your poor cousin enough to share some gossip?”

“Alright, how’s this for gossip: I’m fairly sure that was Sakura who dropped you off at work this morning, which means you did not stay at your own place last night.”

“Woah, hey, I meant gossip about you.”

“Mhm. I know you did.”

His cousin subsided with a pout which Madara echoed without realizing. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t like to do something about his feelings for Tobirama. Certainly he found the younger man fascinating, not to mention deliciously attractive, but he was all too aware that Tobirama’s views on him didn’t extend much farther than a walking hot water bottle and occasional Sibling Distracter.

A hand bopped him on the shoulder and Madara scowled, wiping off the imaginary dirt transfer.

“For real, though. You’re really not going to ask him out?” Shisui tilted his head in question. Everyone in their family knew Madara wasn’t usually the type to be hesitant about the things he wanted.

“There’s no point,” Madara huffed. “He’s not interested. Now drop the subject.”

“Alright, alright, fine. You wanna take one last swing around Central Park before heading back? I think those kids had something on them when they went in there; we should check it out at least.”

Shisui’s instincts were at least right about that. They ended up arresting two young punks for possession and calling backup on the third who tried to do a runner when he was caught selling. It took a while to get them all down to the station and make sure they all understood their rights because the two buyers were so out of their minds they hardly seemed to understand what was going on. Obviously they had been sampling the merchandise as they bought it.

Finally the kid that was selling got fed up and demanded his lawyer, at which point they were required to stop talking to him. Madara was almost grateful enough to thank his cousin when Shisui offered to stay after shift to wait for the counsel to get there. He managed to resist the urge but it was a close call.

He was just filling out the last bit of paperwork and getting ready to head home for dinner when his phone went off and he answered it without thinking, not even bothering to check the caller ID or see if it was a recognized number.

“Madara,” he grunted.

“I didn’t sleep,” Tobirama’s voice announced.

“Seriously!? I put you to bed hours ago!” When he noticed the dangerous grip he’d taken on his pencil Madara made sure to set it down carefully so he didn’t stab the paperwork he’d just spent so much time preparing.

“Well I couldn’t sleep.” If he listened hard enough he could probably hear Tobirama’s uncaring shrug. “I find an empty bed to be both cold and not soothing. I’m sure you know why I called.”

Madara dropped his face in to his free hand. “Yeah. I know.”

“Good. Then come over immediately. I’ve had an amazing increase in productivity each time I slept on top of you and I have a very important paper due soon that I would like to recreate those effects for. When should I expect you?”

“Just…ugh. I’ll pick up something to eat on the way, give me twenty minutes.”

“Acceptable.”

Tobirama hung up and Madara dropped the rest of his upper body on to the desk in defeat. He stirred when someone patted him sympathetically on the back but shook the gesture off and stood up to shoo his partner away. Getting upset about it wasn’t going to help the fact that he knew he was going to cave this easily every time Tobirama asked him to do this – and he also knew that the man had no idea the havoc and inconvenience he was causing. It just wasn’t in his nature to notice things outside of his immediate focus.

Feeling like a man walking to his own doom, Madara slumped back down to the garage and flopped back inside his sedan, heading for the nearest fast food place that sold something he could eat with one hand while driving. Technically he was breaking the law by doing so, engaging in distracted driving, but he knew the people currently on shift and he knew none of them would ever bother to pull someone over for possession of a burger.

When he arrived at Hashirama’s house for the second time that day he sat in the driveway for a couple of minutes, parked beside Mito’s stylish little compact, and let his head rest against the steering wheel while he gave himself a little pep talk.

He fully expected to find Tobirama still in bed just staring at the ceiling or to be met at the top of the stairs and dragged in to the same room he had deposited his favorite idiot in to earlier. Instead he was surprised to open the door and find two haggard eyes staring balefully at him from half a dozen feet down the hall, like a vulture lying in wait. He barely had time to strip off his jacket and belt before Tobirama had claws in his arm dragging him in to the living room.

Since there was no point in doing so he didn’t bother to offer any protests while he was shoved down on to the couch and pushed over sideways. The only reaction he offered was a sigh as he made sure he landed on his back and looked around to ensure the TV remote was close enough to reach this time.

“I can’t sleep with you _every_ night, you know,” he grumbled. Tobirama melted over his chest like liquid human.

“Quiet, couch. You can and you will.”

Madara rolled his eyes. “Wonderful. Now I don’t even have a name.”

“Shhhhhhhh.”

He shushed because he was a smart man unwilling to incur the wrath of a fledgling mad scientist but he didn’t have to like it. Madara spent the half hour it took the other man to fall asleep himself trying to decide if it was worth asking Hashirama to interfere. Which, he thought, should have been a great indicator for how desperate this situation made him feel.

No matter what happened, he had to stay strong. This absolutely had to be the last time this happened.  

Hashirama wandered in to the room at some point, clearly with the intention of watching television, but he stopped and assumed a blank expression when he spotted them lying on his couch yet again. Madara wasn’t sure he had even realized they were both in the house.

“Is this a thing now?” he asked plaintively. Madara would have shrugged but it would have disturbed the man on top of him.

“Apparently.”

Then he dropped his head back, closed his eyes, and settled in to wait for sleep to claim him as well.


	4. Special Delivery

Madara had never slept so well and so frequently in his entire life. Every time he passed a mirror he was startled all over again to see how much the bags under his eyes had faded. He still asked himself each time he woke up if the emotional turmoil was really worth all this wonderful rest, though he had yet to come up with a satisfactory answer.

He had tried to tell Tobirama they needed to stop this, of course, and he’d actually been sort of proud of himself for coming up with a couple of legitimate sounding reasons and communicating them without swearing once. The problem was that Tobirama didn’t care to listen to any of his reasons, letting him go on with a solemn expression until he had ranted himself out of breath and then casually asking when he would be coming over that night.

Sometimes he thought about requesting a transfer back to the night shift so he would only be available for sleeping while Tobirama was still in class. That plan was foiled before it could get off the ground by his absolute bone-deep hatred of the night shift.

After a couple of weeks it merely became a pattern much like any other and Madara eventually gave in to idea that he would continue to be used as a sleep aid, possibly until Tobirama was finished with his schooling. Which, he realized, could be quite some time if he planned on going for his PhD after finishing his master’s. He had asked but Tobirama hadn’t really made up his mind on that yet. So at this point there was no telling when this beautiful torture would end and he might as well enjoy what parts of it that he could until it was all over.

It could have been worse, he consoled himself. They could have actually been sleeping in a bed together and that one slight change in location would have made it all feel so much more intimate. But they continued to sleep on the couch so often that Hashirama had begun to avoid sitting there in case his brother and his best friend showed up for another snooze session. Mito, on the other hand, continued to sit wherever she pleased. The one time Tobirama had tried to drag Madara on to the couch when Mito was already sitting there they ended up cramped in to one corner with Madara sitting upright and Tobirama curled atop his lap, Hashirama staring at them with all the visible signs of mental screaming.

Honestly, Madara had agreed more than he had been offended by the staring.

Although at first he was granted a reprieve every so often when Tobirama pulled all-nighters to study or complete one of his endless projects, after a while Hashirama began to whine at him about it. As though it were at all his job to make sure Tobirama slept! It only took a couple days of Hashirama showing up on his lunch hour to hit him with those big puppy eyes for Madara to give in and hand over the last of his sanity. He was doomed to sleep every night on the Senju household couch, dashing home for a change of clothes every morning and then back in to work before going through the madness all over again.

Packing up his things at the end of the day a couple of months after this all began, Madara avoided lifting his head from the files he had been poring over. If he did then he knew he would find Shisui staring at him over the divider separating their desks. His cousin found a great deal of amusement in his situation, always ready with some kind of smart joke on hand.

“I am not in the mood today,” Madara warned him.

“Oh come on! I thought of a really great pun.”

“Go tell it to Sakura,” he growled. “I’m sure your girlfriend is getting her share of laughter out of this too. She’s always hated me.”

“Probably because you guys have too much in common,” Shisui said, no longer bothering to deny his relationship with the she-devil. Madara really hated it when other people got their lives together so quickly. His cousin paused and frowned, visibly trying to shake off the mental image of the comparison he’d just made.

Seeing his opening, Madara took the opportunity to slip away while the other man was distracted. He snatched up his phone, hit a button to redirect his desk calls, and made a bee-line for the exit. It was Thursday and he’d always liked to grab groceries on Thursday’s so that he could enjoy Friday to himself and not worry for the weekend. With how often he ate dinner over at Hashirama’s place maybe he should have given half his grocery bill to them but they hadn’t asked and Madara knew exactly how much cash they were rolling in. They could afford to feed him.

He zoomed over to the store closest to his own home and rushed through the aisles as fast as he could, running on autopilot and sense memory to find all the items on the list he’d scrawled out on a scrap of paper that morning. Usually he wrote up a whole list using the notes app on his phone but usually he didn’t sleep in on Hashirama’s couch and wake up a half hour before shift to Tobirama squirming and demanding to be released so he could make it to class on time. When Madara handed over the other man’s backpack this morning he’d noticed it was much lighter than usual. He was starting to wonder if Tobirama was lying about the amount of projects he always had just to guilt Madara in to helping him sleep better.

Once he had everything he needed in the cart he fell in to the shortest check-out line he could find and resisted the urge to bounce impatiently on the balls of his feet until finally he was loading up his car with plastic bags and heading off towards home. If he didn’t plan anything too complicated he might even have time to cook his own dinner before getting any ‘where are you’ texts calling him in for mattress duty.

That plan went out the window just like his groceries went sprawling out across the floor when he opened the apartment door to find a very familiar looking couch sitting crooked under the archway between kitchen and living room. Perched in the center of it with two different binders open in his lap, Tobirama barely even twitched at all the ruckus.

“Mito sends her regards,” he said. “She also says not to call before noon.”

“It’s seven pm.”

“Oh. Is it?” he asked mildly. Then his nose was back in whatever he happened to be working on and Madara rethought his theory about faking all the homework.

Looking forward to the day this man graduated and returned to the real world, Madara decided his best friend’s harpy of a wife could at least wait until there wasn’t a carton of ice cream melting on his already discolored kitchen tiles. He watched Tobirama from the corner of one eye as he picked everything up and sorted it all in to the proper spots. It wasn’t surprising to get no further reaction than the scratching of a mechanical pencil no matter how much noise he continued to make.

After everything was put away and the screaming in his head sounded less like the siren on top of his squad car, Madara dug out his cellphone and scrolled through the contacts for Mito’s number. She picked up on the second ring.

“I see you received my package.”

“What the hell, you witch?” Madara growled, turning away from Tobirama and retreating in to the bedroom where he could watch the back of the man’s head from afar.

“Keep them both there and don’t come back,” she commanded. “It has been much too long since my husband and I were able to sit down _alone_ and enjoy an evening together. We can buy a new couch; just keep whatever it is the two of you are doing over there and out of my living room.”

“ _There is nothing inappropriate going on here_ ,” Madara screeched, holding the phone right in front of his face for maximum volume. Too late he froze and realized that was definitely loud enough to be overheard.

Mito, unsurprisingly, had no sympathy for his plight. “Well whatever is going on can go on without an audience.”

She hung up while he was in the middle of hissing some unflattering comments about her possible birth parents. Which, he realized in retrospect, was probably a good thing. Mito was not the kindest person to those who had wronged her and not even Tobirama was stupid enough to ignore the fear of her revenge techniques. A shaven head was less than the least of what she would do to him if she’d heard him insulting her beloved family.

Fuming from both ears Madara punched the end call button, sorely missing the satisfying snap he used to get from ending a call on a flip phone, then stormed a few circles around his bedroom to calm down before heading back out in to the living room. Tobirama had situated himself directly in the center of the couch that used to sit in his brother’s home, both spaces to either side of him left thoughtfully clear. Without anything else to do Madara wandered over and flopped down beside him. He could have gone and sat on his own couch but it just seemed like the thing to do, joining the man already there.

Almost like a magnet to a lode stone, without really seeming to notice he was doing so, Tobirama leaned over to nestle himself up against Madara’s side. It would have been much more charming if Madara weren’t aware the man was likely just seeking a bit of extra warmth.

They sat in silence for a while until the rumbling in his stomach drove Madara back up to make dinner. He was able to tempt his guest away from studying long enough to wolf down a couple plates of stir fry and then they both collapsed on to the couch again and closed their eyes, ready to sleep after a long day. It felt a little strange to sleep there when his actual bed was only a room away but he had to set some boundaries, of course.

It had absolutely nothing to do with how hard it would be to let Tobirama go once he saw the man in his own bed.


	5. Who Needs Sanity Anyway?

“Where do you eat if you never go home?” Madara furrowed his brows as he watched the man across from him pack away his third portion of fish and rice. It wasn’t even that great; he’d been eating his own cooking long enough to admit he was no world class chef but it was disappearing from the man’s plate so fast he started questioning if it had ever been there at all. Tobirama shrugged and patted his mouth daintily with a napkin.

“A lot of my professors buy me meals between classes,” he said, already dragging his textbook closer from where he had shoved it out of the way for dinner.

“Huh. What, just out of the goodness of their hearts?” That seemed unlikely. And suspicious. Madara narrowed his eyes at just the thought of a teacher making advances on their student. That was the sort of thing that got people fired – and he was the kind of man who reported this sort of stuff.

“It pays to take an interest in one’s own education, I suppose.”

Madara let his suspicions fall away and sniggered openly when he saw the tiny smirk curling one corner of Tobirama’s mouth. There was nothing to worry about, apparently. It was not the teachers who were taking advantage of anyone here.

Since he wasn’t even done his first plate yet Madara was content to just sit quietly and watch Tobirama work while he picked at his own fish. It was surprisingly relaxing to take a few moments and watch the way his face moved as he read over his class notes, wrinkling with distaste when he couldn’t read his own writing, lighting up with excitement as he lunged forward to jot something down in the margins of one of his textbooks. For someone whose job was so full of stress during the day Madara was grudgingly grateful to have such a pleasant stress reliever in his home so often now.

Which brought to mind something else he’d been meaning to bring up since Mito had summarily dumped couch and couch potato in his apartment a couple weeks ago.

“You scam free meals off of people between classes. You fall asleep behind the printers at school whenever you please. Are you ever planning to go back to your apartment longer than it takes to get changed?” He was reveling in his own amusement until Tobirama responded with a hum and a thoughtful face.

“I guess I live here now.”

“Wait, what?”

With an easy shrug and nothing more on the matter Tobirama went back to his books. Madara was left to stare with his mouth wide open and his brain screaming louder than it ever had before. Live here? When did they agree on that? It was just supposed to be him helping a poor struggling student to get some better rest so he would stop falling asleep on park benches and the like. Nowhere in any of their conversations could he remember there being any mention of permanent living arrangements.

Gathering himself and trying his best to ignore the way he was spluttering indignantly, Madara opened his mouth to let this perma-guest know exactly what he thought about that plan. He was cut off before he could start when Tobirama looked up again to level him with an analyzing stare.

“You know, you’re actually quite attractive.” His tone suggested he was only just noticing for the first time. “If you ever wanted to do something other than sleep on that couch I would not be opposed.”

Madara was rendered stupid for the second time, barely able to keep breathing.

“Did you just…”

“A little quiet, if you please, I’m trying to design an experiment here.”

“But you…?”

“Is this important?” Tobirama sighed, then paused when he looked up and saw Madara’s expression. “Hm. You’re as pale as a sheet. Is something wrong?”

“Wrong!?”

Rolling his eyes impatiently, he said, “Yes, you look unwell.”

“I’m–! Well you can’t just drop something like that on people without any warning! And without being clear on what you mean!” He paused to clear his throat and meet Tobirama’s eyes before looking away awkwardly. “Because what you said could mean a lot of things and I would hate to, uh, misinterpret that.”

“What is there to misinterpret? All we do is sleep. I would be open to making out sometimes if you have an interest.” Surely there had never been a more casual solicitation.

“Just making out?” Madara ventured. Tobirama lifted one shoulder.

“I wouldn’t turn down sex,” he said.

Madara spluttered again. That wasn’t at all what he had been getting at but he supposed for someone who consistently lived with their head up in the clouds like Tobirama did, lost in his own world away from the rest of humanity, it probably seemed like a perfectly logical conclusion to come to. In the part of his mind that wasn’t screaming loudly enough to wake the neighbors he wondered what had really sparked this sudden offer. They had been spending a lot more time together since that infernal couch had been delivered, actually doing more than falling asleep the moment they were in the same room together.

None of that clarified whether Tobirama was only looking for something physical or if he had finally noticed the fool that fell for him a long time ago. Sadly, Madara was willing to bet on the first option.

“Right,” he said faintly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Do. Now, may I get back to what I was doing?” Tobirama waited but when he got no reply he simply bent his head and did just that.

Madara forced himself to stand up and collect the dishes, his appetite entirely gone. Or, more accurately, it was no longer food that he had an appetite for. All sorts of images chased each other back and forth across his brain until he was afraid that he might tackle the other man away from the table and commit several unspeakable acts right there on the kitchen floor.

To distract himself he did the washing up and then turned his attention to the rest of the apartment. Chores had never been his favorite thing but they did need to get done and he had learned from his very first job how to take proper advantage of his days off. When the week was over he spent his first day off in a whirlwind of cleaning and got everything done at once, leaving the second day free for lounging and general laziness. Most of the gross chores like cleaning bathrooms had been done earlier in the day. Now that dinner was over and the dishes were taken care of his next target was to clean the floors.

After vacuuming, mopping, and tossing in a load of laundry Madara drew an arm across his forehead and turned towards his bedroom out of habit. Then he stopped and floundered because there wasn’t much of a need to make his bed when the blankets hadn’t been disturbed in weeks. Feeling a little off balance, he made his way back out to at least straighten the blankets they’d been using on the couch instead, fluffing out the extra pillow he’d taken from the linen closet. They only needed one since Tobirama always ended up curling on top of him anyway

He started these shenanigans as a glorified space heater and somewhere along the way he’d been upgraded to human pillow. Madara honestly wasn’t sure if that was worse or better.

By the time Tobirama resurfaced from his papers Madara was showered and sitting on the bed-couch with his legs crossed in front of him on the cushion like a child, eyes trained on the television to watch some mind-numbing comedy show. He wasn’t at all surprised to be shoved over sideways for a hand to tug at his legs. Madara rearranged himself to where he was usually wanted and kept his eyes on the TV, expecting Tobirama to simply collapse on top of him and fall asleep like always.

What he did find surprising was the pair of lips that attached themselves to his own without any warning. Tobirama was warm above him, thighs sliding over to encase his own and hands braced against the cushions beside his head. Madara groaned. Not for a moment had he forgotten their conversation from earlier but he’d hardly expected anything to come of it so soon. If anything he would have thought Tobirama would be the one to forget about it or wait for Madara to make a move, too caught up in his own world as usual to seek out anything other than his books and sleep.

One hand lifting up to slide down his chest jolted Madara back to reality and he groaned again when Tobirama tilted his head to get a better angle. The taste of mint toothpaste was light on his tongue and he wondered when the other man had slipped away to brush his teeth.

Then it was over as quickly as it began, Tobirama sitting upright where he was straddled over Madara’s hips. Madara gaped up at him, watching those pretty pink lips smack together thoughtfully.

“Hmm yes. An excellent experience. I would _certainly_ not be opposed to doing that on occasion.” He nodded to himself decisively and then collapsed forward to bury his face in Madara’s neck, melting over top of him in the way that meant he had every intention of being asleep within the next ten seconds. It was safest not to disturb him at that point.

Not that Madara could have even if he wanted to. Shock had once again rendered him completely still; by the time he gathered his flustering thoughts he looked down to find Tobirama completely at peace, far away in dreamland.

This was probably what it was going to be like every time, he realized distantly. Without a doubt this is what he had to look forward to. Tobirama was going to maul him at random until the man had found whatever satisfaction he was looking for and then he would be left reeling in the aftermath, aroused and frustrated and completely unable to fulfil his own sudden needs, not unless he wanted to reach between their bodies while trying not to disturb his companion.

Something had to give. Madara closed his eyes and let his head fall back with an explosive sigh. There were a lot of things he could live with for Tobirama’s sake but he wasn’t sure he would survive this latest development in their very weird relationship.

Maybe Mito was right to force a little privacy on them. He definitely didn’t want any witnesses here when he finally got up the courage to confront Tobirama – or when he crumbled afterwards in the wake of the inevitable rejection.


	6. Clearing The Air

Boxes. An entire sea of cardboard boxes filling up that one barren corner of his living room that he’d always meant to do something with but never really got around to it. Until now there hadn’t been anyone around to make him feel pressured in to the task and even when Tobirama had appeared he’d figured the fool wouldn’t notice anything that wasn’t food or schoolwork.

Now there were boxes and Madara had a couple of guesses as to where they came from but he was having a hard time figuring out why they chose now to appear. Luckily the man he was after had flopped down in the middle of the mess as though he intended to make himself a homework fort.

“Should I ask?” he drawled. Tobirama looked up from his phone, on which he appeared to be googling some kind of rare chemical compounds.

“My lease came up for renewal but my building manager told me he had some people willing to pay more for the apartment and he wanted me officially gone. So I suppose I really just live here now.” One careless shrug and he was lost to his research again.

Madara sat down hard on the bed-couch, still hovering in the doorway between living room and kitchen at just such an angle that he could watch TV while his self-declared roommate slept. It was too much. He had suffered quite a bit for this man, through confusion and frustration and not a few nights when it took all his self-control not to just roll his hips and take a bit of pleasure no one ever had to know about. Unfortunately he was a police officer who knew right from wrong. He was also, however, hoping to see a promotion to detective someday soon and detectives liked to find answers.

“I think I’m drawing the line,” he said.

“Hm?”

“You can’t just keep _playing_ with me like this.”

Curious, Tobirama resurfaced from his phone. Madara had enough brainpower to at least appreciate the amount of attention he was getting as opposed to last week when Hashirama came to visit and spent over an hour trying to entice Tobirama away from the page of calculations he was studying. The rest of his brain was busy scrambling to tie the loose ends of his sanity back together so he wouldn’t fly apart under the constant confusion of this ridiculous situation between them.

“I am not playing anything,” Tobirama said, a hint of curiosity in his tone. Madara snorted.

“You sleep on me! With cuddling! And you get mad at me when I sleep without you or I can’t be there when _you_ want to sleep and–! You kiss me! Now the moving in and I can’t! I can’t anymore!” Pulling at twin handfuls of hair, Madara’s eyes squeezed shut with the force of his emotions. “There’s no way you can tell me you _haven’t_ noticed I’m in love with you! So just stop! No more! Okay!?”

Tobirama slowly lowered his phone down to his lap, jaw falling open to gape in shock. “Wha–?”

“Any more of this and I’ll have an actual break down and you _know_ I’m ugly when I cry! Everyone says so! I just need…I don’t know.” Madara deflated as easily as he had gotten himself riled up.

What he needed was to hibernate for at least three seasons until these stupid feelings went away or until he starved himself to death, whichever came first. At this point either would have been good.

“No, you misunderstand me.” Tobirama set his phone aside and stood. When he stepped forward Madara scowled and leaned back. He was met with the back of their bed-couch and stayed trapped there as the other man approached, pinning him in place with narrowed eyes.

“Stop it, whatever you’re doing!”

“Be quiet for a minute and listen!” With a huff Tobirama poked him in the middle of his chest. “You think I fell asleep on you every day for _several months_ , laid my head down on your chest when I was tired and looked for you – _only you_ – when I needed rest, but I’m still too stupid to think there might be something between us? Why the _hell_ would I kiss you if I didn’t like you?”

Madara pinched his lips together. “Fucked if I know.”

“You’re an idiot. And here I thought it was perfectly clear where we were headed! It’s hardly my fault you never made a move so I kissed you myself. Are you telling me you _still_ don’t realize we’re already dating?” Tobirama poked him in the chest again with one thin finger but Madara was too busy staring to react.

“Wait what?” he asked faintly.

“Is there a specific part of that you needed me to repeat?”

“Dating!? You think we’re already dating!?”

Finally Tobirama paused, looking unsure of himself for the first time. “Are we not? You didn’t oppose me when I kissed you…” He had the gall to look more confused when Madara flailed with violent exasperation.

“Of course I didn’t ‘oppose’ you! I wanted it – and more! But I don’t want you kissing me or thinking we’re dating just because I happen to make a comfortable pillow!”

“That isn’t it at all!”

“Then tell me what the deal is here because you’ve never shown any signs that you might want something from me other than a bed buddy! I’ve been going crazy this whole time trying to hold myself together with you draped all over me and you’re telling me suddenly that you think we’re dating?” Madara snarled out of sheer frustration. “I don’t like having my feelings played with. I’ll be the first to admit that some parts of having you here have been amazing but it’s – I – _this_ is too much. You can’t live here. You have a whole room at Hashirama’s house waiting for you! Go move in there!”

He was panting by the time he finished, a little surprised by himself. It was hard to remember the last time he’d said so much all at once without being interrupted or giving testimony on the witness stand. Tobirama gaped at him in naked shock.

“Um…can we go back to the part where you said you were in love with me? I sort of passed that over because I didn’t think you meant it seriously but…” Shuffling awkwardly, Tobirama scrubbed at one arm with the opposite hand and let his voice trail off without finishing his sentence. Madara swallowed thickly.

“We don’t, er, need to focus on that, do we?” he mumbled.

“I think we do. Namely because I…hadn’t realized. Truthfully, I hadn’t realize that you felt anything for me beyond a mere acceptance of my presence.”

“Acceptance?” Madara parroted in disbelief.

Tobirama wrinkled his nose slightly. “Knowing how you truly feel makes it seem a bit of a ridiculous assumption, I agree. I thought I had broadcasted my desire for a relationship quite clearly and yet you never seemed to have an interest so when you allowed me to rest on top of you and it turned out to be the best sleep of my entire life I saw no downsides to asking that we continue to do so.”

“Hn, ‘ _ask’_.”

“Fair, I don’t suppose I ever truly asked anything.”

“No, you demanded,” Madara said, “with little regard for what my answer might be.”

“In any case, I kissed you because I was growing impatient and I wanted to know once and for all if you saw anything between us. Your only qualm seemed to be that you wanted more than just kissing and I thought…”

“You thought _that_ meant we were suddenly dating!?” Madara wondered, faintly, why he made such poor life choices as to fall in love with a man stupider than himself.

Actually that wasn’t true.  Tobirama wasn’t stupid, he was just socially oblivious and didn’t care much for learning how to be otherwise. But that didn’t make it any easier to swallow that he had been suffering for nothing this entire time just because they both refused to open their mouths and talk like regular people with regular emotions.

He unashamedly placed most of the blame for this on Tobirama’s hands. Madara would be the first to admit that he was bad at flirting but Tobirama had given off absolutely no signals other than hatred in all the years they had known each other, right up until the day he–

“Oooooh.” Madara’s empty body drained off tension, his face going slack with wonder. “When you were off at university that first year – holy shit. That’s why you made me sit next to you and keep you warm when the heater wasn’t working.”

“Mhm.”

“You liked me _back then_?”

“Clearly. Why else would I have let you cuddle me like that?”

“Let me? That was another _demand_! You gave me no choice!” Through sheer force of will Madara managed to avoid sticking his tongue out. He was a grown man up for promotion to detective in a very respectable precinct and he would not resort to such childish measures.

He would, however, resort to crossing his arms and snorting pointedly in Tobirama’s direction. The head tilt he got in return was incredibly unsatisfying as far as reactions go.

“Question. Are we fighting right now because we’ve both been wanting to date each other but neither of us realized that the other was interested so now that we’re both on the same page we’re releasing all of that pent up tension we couldn’t discuss before?” Tobirama furrowed his brows while Madara snapped his jaw shut, both of them glaring thoughtfully across the small space between them.

“I think so,” Madara said.

Tobirama grunted. “So we could be making out instead now that we both get what’s going on?”

“We could. I’m still a little mad at you.”

“Understandable.”

Madara nodded slowly. Then he lurched upwards off the cushions and crushed their mouths together. It obviously wasn’t the first time they had kissed but it was the first time he had been able to reciprocate without feeling like he was bracing himself for some inevitable fallout afterwards. The arm of the couch behind him was all that kept him upright then as his knees went weak, hands clutching the back of Tobirama’s shirt both to hold himself up and to keep the other man as close as possible.

When Tobirama groaned against him he swallowed the sound eagerly and tilted his head for a better angle. The kiss tasted like relief, like frustration bleeding out to leave room for everything he had been pushing down to spring up instead and fill him. He felt buoyant when they pulled apart. If his feet had lifted from the ground right then he wouldn’t have been surprised – though he would have held on tighter to make certain that Tobirama came with him because just the thought of separation after such a revelation was painful.

Finally achieving the one goal he had deemed hopeless years ago, now _that_ was a rush not even cracking the hardest case could beat.

“I guess you can stay here and live with me officially,” he murmured, deliberately offhand.

“Can we sleep in the bed now, then?” Tobirama asked. “You’re very comfortable but I’ll bet you’d be much more comfortable if I had you on a mattress.” Madara choked.

“Don’t phrase it like that!”

“Are you turning down sex?”

“Why can’t you just let me have _one_ nice moment? Huh? Just one, that’s all I’m asking!”

Tobirama’s laughter was as pleasing to the ear as ever but it didn’t do much to dampen his annoyance this time. Still, Madara couldn’t find it in himself to get truly angry at the man – not when he finally had a chance to taste that laughter right from the source.


	7. Happily Ever Interrupted

“Hey do you need this?”

Madara paused on his way passed the master bathroom and peeked his head in, squawking when he spotted the item Tobirama had dug out of a drawer while trying to make space for his own toiletries.

“No! I don’t – it’s not – just throw it out!” He snatched the concealer cream out of the pale fingers clutching it and tossed it in the bin, doing his best to ignore the sudden heat in his cheeks. The bags under his eyes had improved significantly since the two of them started getting better sleep all those months ago. Madara had almost managed to forget he used to need concealer just to stop his coworkers from making zombie references every day.

“Alright, alright, no need to get crabby.” From the way Tobirama was smirking he could tell that any protests about the cream not being his own would go ignored. Instead of fighting that losing battle he merely sneered and swept out of the room again to bring yet another box of Tobirama’s clothes to the bedroom for sorting.

Moving in had seemed like such a simple concept until the two of them realized they both utterly despised unpacking. Two weeks later and they were still slowly making their way through the first half of the boxes. He was starting to think that Tobirama only owned clothes and science equipment, nothing else. In the massive pile that had taken over the empty corner of his living room he had yet to unearth anything different other than a single box of medical texts – he hadn’t asked – and a box full of wooden carvings that Tobirama had promptly squirreled away in the deepest darkest closet they had.

Apparently Hashirama had gone through a phase as a child when he’d tried to learn how to whittle. Madara tucked away the knowledge that Tobirama had kept them all in the back of his mind, both for later examination and for possible blackmail material.

He was sorting the latest box of clothes when Tobirama came wandering in to the room with a manila folder open across his hands.

“What about this, do you need this? The pictures are interesting.” When Madara looked closer it was to find a case file filled with images of a gruesome murder. He lunged forward to snatch it out of Tobirama’s hand.

“Don’t look at that!”

“Why not?” His boyfriend frowned at him, unhappy to have something taken away so rudely.

“It’s a case file! You can’t be looking at my case files!”

Crossing his arms now that they were empty, Tobirama snorted indelicately. “I repeat myself: why not?”

“Because they are confidential!” Madara rifled through the contents to make sure nothing was missing and then looked around for somewhere to tuck it away. “How would you like it if I went through your research notes, huh?”

“I would be delighted to have you take an interest in what I do,” Tobirama mumbled.

Madara spun around but his boyfriend had already whipped out his phone and buried his nose in it, the only sign that he wasn’t as distracted as he seemed showing as a line of pink across the bridge of his nose.

Thankfully he was saved from having to come up with a response by a knock on the front door. His emotions weren’t sure what to do with such an open invitation in to the most important part of the other man’s life, not when the relationship between them had always felt very closed right up until the day they finally admitted they were actually _in_ a relationship. It made him wonder if they could have cleared the air between them a long time ago if he had only taken more of an interest in Tobirama’s work. It wasn’t even that he wasn’t interested, just that he tended to get lost after the first few sentences. Still, maybe he should make a point to ask more questions in the future; even if he didn’t understand the answer it was clear the effort would be appreciated.

As soon as he opened the front door Madara scowled and tried to close it again. Hashirama beamed at him even as he bulled his way inside with all the delicacy of a walking tree stump.

“I came to see how you guys are doing!” he said cheerfully. Tobirama appeared in the bedroom doorway, eyes on his phone and eyebrows raised.

“No you didn’t.”

“Can’t a man just stop by and visit his precious people?” Hashirama clapped Madara on the shoulder and slipped around him to try and wrestle a hug out of his baby brother. Tobirama sidestepped him neatly, the movement made graceful by so many years of practice.

Placing himself safely behind Madara’s bulk, Tobirama wiggled his cellphone without looking away from it. “Mito texted me five minutes ago that you burned alfredo to the bottom of her last good saucepan. You’re not here to see us.”

Hashirama wilted, ducking his chin to give Madara his signature puppy eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m not stepping in between you and that she-devil,” he growled.

“So mean!” Hashirama cried. It was hard to tell if he was upset that they were saying mean things about his wife or that they wouldn’t defend his honor against her. Either way Madara only shrugged with very little care.

“I have to leave for work in half an hour and I fully planned to spend that time pinning your brother against a wall. Did you want to stay and watch or…?” He grinned at his best friend, showing way too many teeth for the expression to be considered friendly, and chuckled when both of the Senju brothers gave shivers for very different reasons.

“Noooo,” Hashirama whined. “I never see either of you guys anymore. Let me stay and hang out!”

Tobirama sighed and dropped his forehead between Madara’s shoulder blades as he murmured, “Get your gun.”

“Right here, love,” Madara assured him, patting his holster. Hashirama shrieked.

“What!? No, don’t shoot me! I just wanted to spend some time together! Why are you both so cruel to me!?”

As fun as it was watching him scramble to take cover in the bathroom, Madara truly was disappointed to have their last bit of alone time interrupted. He turned around to pull Tobirama against him without bothering to check whether Hashirama was peeking out at them or not. If that oaf didn’t want to see them in compromising positions than he shouldn’t show up at their home uninvited.

First drawing his partner in to a deep kiss that lingered and soothed a part of his soul that he would never ever talk about out loud, Madara dipped his head down to nibble on the lobe of one pale ear.

“Pity that we were intruded upon,” he said quietly. “I like seeing you in that bed too much; I had plans to spread you across it as soon as you sat down.” He was thrilled to feel Tobirama shudder in his arms, lithe bodily shifting against him gently as if the other man couldn’t bear to keep still.

“You will come _straight home_ from work.”

“Getting demanding, are we? What if I had some errands to run?”

Tobirama pulled away to level him with a very unimpressed look. “Fuck your errands.”

“Alright then.” Madara bit his lips to keep in the laughter as he pulled Tobirama back in to his arms.

Hashirama would come out of hiding soon enough and he would have to spend the last of his free time before work socializing – not the most terrible of fates; the man _was_ his best friend after all. It wasn’t what he had planned to do with his morning but, truly, none of this was what he had planned to do with his life in general and he couldn’t honestly bring himself to be upset with any of it.

Sure he spent less time with his friend lately but the time they did spend together was less about emotional support to help him deal with his job and more about _just_ spending that time together doing stupid things like they were supposed to. And afterwards he was able to go home to the man of his dreams, quietly buried in some textbook or another and probably sprawled out across the couch he refused to let Madara get rid of. He also refused to move it out of the archway between kitchen and living room. That was, apparently, just the right place for it.

When the bathroom door cracked open and one of Hashirama’s hands appeared to point in their general direction with instructions to “stop being gross” Madara only laughed and held his boyfriend tighter. It had involved a lot of frustration but he had finally found just the right place for himself as well – and he had no plans to change that any time soon.


End file.
